Chasing Cheerios

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

My Little Reader

O and I are at G & G's house, so we haven't been doing any Montessori work this week. However, O keeps asking us to teach her to read. She loves to pretend to read, but she really wants to "read the REAL words!" She does a great job dragging her finger across the words from left to right while she "reads" books to us. So, my mom has been teaching her sight words. She caught on very quickly and is quite proud of herself. I'm not sure how far we'll go with this. I guess we'll just follow her lead. She's awfully young to be reading, but I hate to deny her request. Any thoughts?

Re. reading at a young age: GO FOR IT!!! The potential for learning effortlessly closes around 6 years of age so, the more you can present the earlier, the better. As you know from your Montessori work (even non-trained), the child will lead and reading is no different than any other discipline -- art, cooking, music, etc.

Happy Reading!!

(disclaimer: just mho. no harm is meant to anyone during the reading of this post.)

I would also say, if she is requesting it and has fun there shouldn't be a problem. However, I am no professional ... What are "sight words"? My daughter is also requesting to learn how to read. But I think she is older than O though (3 1/2 years). But still very young for reading. I really don't know how to go about it ... do you start teaching her how to discriminate letters?

If O is wanting to learn how to read, teach her as much as she wants! When she tires of it, she will let you know and then she can pursue other interests. One thing that you can do to help her learn to read is to print out signs with the names of objects in your home and tape them to the objects (door, table, sink, fireplace, kitchen, wall, light switch, etc.). This will allow her to work on the words as she wants.

Go for it! As long as it's child led, I see no reason to deny her request to learn to read. Have you considered using the Dolch sight word list? It's a good place to start b/c it'll enable O to learn the words she's most likely to encounter in books.

Wow, thanks for all of the quick responses! You guys are saying pretty much what I've been thinking, so that makes me feel better :)

Miss Muffin- Sight words are words that can't be sounded out. Basically the child just memorizes the word.

Jacqueline- I have the dolch lists at my office, so hopefully I'll be able to find them on Thursday when I go to work.

Katherine- Great idea to write names of objects on household items! I've suggested that to parents of kids I've tested, but never would have thought of doing it myself :) I think O will LOVE it. Thanks!

If she is interested why wouldn't you?! My daughter learned some reading from the "Your Baby Can Read" DVD series. She knew lots of sight words before her second birthday which got her excited about words. From there I made games where you can match the written word of the color with the color itself, other word and picture matching, and I have put words of her common foods on the fridge so that when she wants to ask for it she puts a magnet on the right word.

When I was about 20 months old, I asked (or demanded, depending on who you ask) that I be taught to read. I already knew my letters, and with my mom's help, I was reading on my own right before my 2nd birthday. She just followed my lead- no harm done. I've done the same with my daughter, who wanted to learn the alphabet when she was about 15 months. Good luck to you and O!

As long as you aren't pushing her, I would go ahead. But be careful to make sure it's what she wants to do. Also make sure that you are still reading to her when she does learn. Kids listen at a higher reading level than they read.

If she wants to go for it! My son read really early, and it was after his lead. He is five now and can read easy chapter books, he loves reading so much, I am glad I went along with his wishes to learn to read when I did!

N was reading by 2 1/2, and I found there was really no stopping her - once she got it in her head that that's what she wanted to do, that was it. As long as O is spearheading the effort and staying interested, go for it! Keep it "fun" and follow her lead - that was the advice I was given when I asked this same question over a year ago, and it's worked for us.

I think it's great that O is so excited about reading and even better that you are approaching it carefully, following her lead. As a school/pre-school teacher I have seen lots of different children 'click' with sight words at different times - each one only when they were ready. And a few too many switched off because by a (non-Montessori) curriculum which dictated what they should do and when.Sight words are great because it's about a visual recognition of something - I'm sure there are many parents who wouldn't consider their children to be 'reading' even though they could recognise the McD's golden arches (or something similar) at an early age!Love the idea in a previous post of having labels around the house. My classroom was littered with them and it has never crossed my mind to repeat this at home. My daughter is only 18 months but this has reminded me that she soaks up so much without actually being 'taught' that I ought to get busy labelling now. Have you come across the blog 'The Write Start'? Lots of great ideas about print/letters in the environment - I especially liked the one about leaving letters scattered as table decoration which might get noticed at mealtimes.PS Love your blog and have been lurking for a short while - have got lots of new ideas from you!

Ebi-kun was the same at O's age, he wuld get really into for a while then something else would take hold but I say go with it, if she wants to do go for it.

I highly recommend the Clever Critters books, we started with the Level 1 set but there is a pre-readers set too.

Miss Muffin - sight words are those that can't read phonically (usually) AND are frequently used in English. Have a look here for the list and extra info.http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/Dolch/Dolch.html

My oldest did the same thing at about 2 1/2- BEGGING to learn to read! So I made sure he knew all of the sounds then showed him how to sound out short vowel words. He is very into language- in fact he rarely chooses work outside of the language area unless I set up shelves for him that have no language work at all.

I use two montessori materials primarily with this- the pink cards and the moveable alphabet. I make most of our materials, but I would invest in a good moveable alphabet- it has been used day after day around here! I printed my own pink cards and I've made them available to him. If he brings me a stack to work through we will read as many as he wants to read, but usually he chooses to take the picture cards to the table along with the moveable alphabet and sounds out the word and spells it with the MA. He can always sound out a word, but it's still individual sounds being put together rather than a full-fledged word coming out of his mouth.

I'm planning to work more formally on reading over the summer with the Victory Drill Book and see where that takes us.

Elise watched the Leapfrog Letter factory DVD and absorbed the letter sounds by 18 months. She still can't speak very well, but she is clearly sounding out words on her own at 2.5.

My oldest was also an early reader and we did not find any negatives about the situation--it only increased his love of learning and decreased our mutual frustration (boredom on his part, inability to keep up on my part).

As a former first grade teacher (and early reader!), these are my recommendations:

O may like making books using pictures of things around the house: Foods We Eat, My Family, Things That Are Cold/Round/Soft, Animals. A book can be as simple as a piece of typing paper folded in half, then in half again, or you can poke holes in large index cards and bind with yarn or metal rings. You could also staple blank pages together. As you label things she knows (paste photos or magazine pictures into the book, or draw your illustrations), she will pick up on the sounds. Don't worry about "naming" the letters right away; that is a secondary skill, and not as important as learning the sounds. If you want to teach specific letters, you could do a book of Words That Start With B, or concentrate on letters in O's name.

Another thing you can do is play word games in the car: What rhymes with ____? or What words start with the "k" sound? Make it a game where you each come up with a word and continue until one of you can't think of any more words. These types of games help strengthen phonemic awareness (what words sound like, as opposed to phonics which is what words look like), which is an important reading skill.

There is no harm in allowing a child to read at an early age. The main concern teachers have when they hear of a young child reading early is what the child's level of understanding is. You can practice this skill by talking about books as you read to O and as she begins to read to you.

My mom always tells me that I was reading before I turned 3. So, yeah, like everyone else said (and you instinctively feel) I would say go for it! It would probably be great to start when her enthusiasm is so high!

If she is interested, then why wouldn't you follow her lead? I think it's great that she is expressing such interest. As long as you aren't drilling her with flash cards, which I can't imagine that you would do!

My son went to Montessori primary at 3yo knowing all his letter sounds and recognizing all his letters but not being able to read yet. (Go Leapfrog DVDs.) Our M school has a reading curriculum that they have developed themselves with books at different levels. (They use the moveable alphabet and all of that too of course.) In terms of books though, they start with just certain letters, and then the first "books" are BOB Books. We have them at home as well, and they are awesome. I highly recommend them. They really give a child confidence that they can really read. It took about six months for the idea of "blending" to click with him, but once it did, his reading really took off.

My 4.5yo Montessori son reads almost as well as my 1st grader (no Montessori), and I really credit it to his M school and their program.

I know I'm on a montessori site so this might not be well-received. my daughter read by 3 b/c she also pushed us to teach her. she knew her abc's and what they said by 2. so, i asked some home schooling mom's what they used, knowing i wanted phonics.

anywho, a few ladies recommended sing, spell, read and write. it has songs, games, and workbooks that teach writing along with reading to incorporate tactile methods. my daughter really liked it as long as i kept it short for her attention span. i have not pushed her beyond short letter words, but she can pretty much read a 3 letter word (or four letter if it's plural) whether she's seen it before or not. so, even though it's a curriculum, it's a thought. good luck. i think the important part is to keep it fun.

Thanks, Leighann! Your comment was well-received :) We do mainly focus on Montessori work, but I'm not montessori trained and I want to try whatever works. Like you said...the most important thing is to make learning fun!

About Me

Welcome to Chasing Cheerios! I am a mostly stay at home mom (I work 45 days per year as a School Psychologist) of 2 girls and wife to Elliott. "O" is 6 years old, and "E" is 2. We love to do Montessori inspired activities with our girls as well as fun art, science, nature, and cooking projects. I also love to make things with and for my girls. Please contact me with any questions at ChasingCheerios@gmail.com

I put together this activity for O(5) a few months ago to take on vacation. It was super simple to put together. I used sharpie marker ...

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